Rugby Australia brings in finance whiz to find $15m in cuts

Rugby Australia is bracing for $15m in cuts following the appointment of Adam Foulsham to the role of Chief Operating Officer.

Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan has hired a cost cutter. Picture: John Feder

Rugby Australia is bracing for another round of pain following the appointment of Adam Foulsham, a man described as “tough as old boots” to the role of Chief Operating Officer, tasked with identifying and eliminating $15m worth of costs from the organisation.

Much as RA attempted to soft-sell Foulsham’s planned arrival next Monday, the reality is that senior officials still believe the business of rugby is in terrible shape and recognise that he will need to “go in hard” if they hope to save the game.

The shedding of 47 fulltime jobs out of the 142 at RA headquarters back at the start of June slashed $5.5m from the wages bill while later that month, NSW Rugby announced it would make 15 roles — 27 per cent of its workforce — redundant. Of that 15, 12 were community development officers, so the cuts were biting deeply into grassroots rugby.

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RA chairman Hamish McLennan, who has long maintained that the organisation has to become leaner and nimbler, suggested Foulsham was precisely the man to achieve those objectives.

“He is thoroughly decent, as tough as they come, and I’ll be leaning on him to make sure there is no wastage between RA, member unions and the Super clubs, not one penny wasted,” McLennan told The Australian.

Lest anyone mistake Foulsham for a one-man razor gang, McLennan did attempt to round out and soften his role somewhat. “He will also be tasked with helping us grow our commercial revenue.”

McLennan also indicated RA was lucky to have got him, given that Foulsham has spent the last decade in New York, most recently serving as CFO at marketing agency Wunderman Thompson after leading the merger of Wunderman and the J Walter Thompson group of companies. While there, Foulsham led all financial functions of the $1.3 billion dollar group and was responsible for saving more than $125m after implementing new systems following staff restructure. It was only the COVID-19 crisis which prompted his return to his native Australia.

Rob Clarke, the last person to hold the title “Chief Operating Officer” in RA — or, as it was then, the Australian Rugby Union — believes a considerable amount could be saved in the game simply by eliminating duplication across the states.

“He (Foulsham) is seeing where we can leverage buying power on all the common elements that we all utilise,” Clarke said.

“There are lots of efficiency to be gained there. Covid has focused all of our attention. Every business is looking at ways of being more efficient and effective and so now is our opportunity and Adam has a stellar background and experience in these types of matters in very big business, globally, and already we are starting to see his acute sense of detail and understanding of how to go about delivering these types of plans.”

At a time when Wales has announced it is following the lead of England in cutting its sevens program, there were fears that Foulsham might turn his attention to the Australian men’s and women’s programs. Clarke, however, did not see that happening, not now at least.

“Fortunately we have very strong support from the AIS and the Olympic funding for both those programs and while there is a challenge of bolstering the commercial returns on sevens is difficult now because of restricted games and tournaments, I don’t anticipate the fundamental programs being impacted negatively,” he said.

Australian men’s head coach Tim Walsh insisted the funding models were completely different with Britain, with England, Wales and Scotland all competing on the World Series as individual countries but coming together every four years to contest the Olympics as Great Britain.

“I think what might end up happening is that GB might end up playing on the World Series, not the separate nations,” Walsh said. “We’re surviving and hopefully we will thriving soon. The beauty is that we have qualified for the Olympics and we have some Olympic funding.

“We’re still well short of enough money to retain the core players. All of our players were off-contract last month and we’re trying to find some more funding to secure them.

“The Australian players have, in fact, taken it upon ourselves to try to become business development managers and diversify our product and sell ourselves in terms of executive leadership programs, coaching clinics to enable us to be financially viable and get in position where we can go to the Olympics.”